


method to our madness

by oeuftriste



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angry Boyfriends, Depression, Explicit Language, For Me, M/M, New writing style, Suicidal Thoughts, They're both pretentious little shits, a bit of violence, i will continue this someday, idk what to tag it, today is not that day
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-20 23:26:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1529660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oeuftriste/pseuds/oeuftriste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Eren had just jumped to start with, maybe he wouldn't be in this mess. But then again, this Jean person is pretty good-looking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	method to our madness

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really, _really_ , spectacularly bad at first chapters. It'll hopefully get better.  
> [I have a Tumblr](http://1001100-1100101-1110110-1101001.tumblr.com)

He stood at the edge of the structure because that day, she had said where's the trash can and she had thrown the crumpled up wrapper at him.

If he had stood at the edge of the structure just because of that, he would be overreacting; but I can assure you that he was, by no means, overreacting.

Maybe it wasn't overreacting because he had been treated that way for years;

Maybe because his home life was rough.

Maybe because he had been strong the whole time and that thing, the little thing the girl did, was merely a scratch upon the surface of his ego, but it was enough to finally break it.

But he stood at the edge, thinking of how the things that were happening at that very moment were the last happenings that would ever happen to him. The last sunset. The last breeze trailing through his hair. The last tears, the last view of the mountains in the distance, the last time he had his eyes open, the last, the last, _the last_. The last goodbye.

But, unfortunately for his already damaged conscience, it was not the last goodbye. No, it was not. It was also not the second to last, or the third to last, or the infinity to last goodbye he would ever give.

But, hey, it seemed like that, to him, at that moment, standing at the edge.

People don't usually think about their lasts unless they intend to die; and they don't stand at the edge of a beam in an abandoned construction site, two hundred feet up, unless they intend to die. (There is a chance that one might intend to prove something to their friends or their potential admirer, but that only happens to kids who have no respect for their own lives, and he was not a kid.)

He was a victim to the majority; therefore, he did, in fact, intend to die.

And the easiest way to kill yourself while standing at the edge of a beam in an abandoned construction site, two hundred feet up, is to take the leap- both metaphorically and physically.

He was going to do that. He was going to just jump, and his life would be gone, and he would have the satisfaction of knowing that his peers would have no-one to pick on anymore, and they would be bored and perhaps die of boredom.

He was going to do that, but someone called for him and he was not quite so rude as to jump and leave the person there, with the belief that they had climbed two hundred feet up a dangerous abandoned construction site and said something all in vain.

"Yeah?"

Eren turned his head to the side (and a bit of his torso, but I am just saying head for literary purposes). He was going to jump and simply end it. He tilted his head down dramatically, like they did in the movies, an action that was supposed to express sadness and make you look pretty damn thoughtful.

He did not know that the person standing behind him was going to perhaps become a part of his life, and maybe, just maybe, an object of his affection. These were not the _consequences_ he had expected to face by not jumping off immediately.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

If the strange stranger had said something like it's not worth it or there's a life worth living for or It will get better he might have still been able to summon the willpower to jump. But the strange stranger did not say something like that, so he was forced to stay un-jumped and alive.

"I'm standing at the edge of a beam in an abandoned construction site, two hundred feet up, with intentions of jumping," said Eren.

The strange stranger was probably not expecting a response like that.

"I wasn't expecting a response like that," said the strange stranger, whom we will call Stranger J for literary purposes. (And, perhaps, a hint as to who the strange stranger was.)

"I can imagine why," replied Eren. Maybe because he looked like any dumb old emo 16-year-old you might find on the street. But I can assure you that he was anything but that; no, he was an dumb old emo 15-year-old you might find on the street, and there is a distinct difference between the two.

"Yeah, well, you haven't answered my question well enough to my liking," said the strange stranger- or, as I will now call him, Stranger J. "You wanna try again?"

Eren knew that Stranger J was only trying to stall him, but he decided to humor him by seemingly going along with it and suddenly- oop! falling.

"I am a very, very, depressed person. With intentions of dying," said Eren.

Eren heard Stranger J huff, and he suddenly felt a hand wrapped around his arm. And Stranger J said, "I'm taking you down so you can answer me properly, asshole," and tugged at his arm.

  
Eren believed Stranger J was an idiot, and if he did not stop him, they were both going to topple off not from the very edge of the structure, and Eren would have to deal with maybe hitting a few beams on the way down instead of having a nice, clean (or maybe not-so-clean) landing on the ground. And a dead person, who might have been an idiot but was still someone he did not know and therefore was not to be someone whose death he should not have been responsible for.

"Fine" was what he finally said, since he was getting tired of playing along and was getting cold from the now absent sun.

He had always wondered if it was harder to climb down things than to get up them, or if it was just something his mind had told him to believe since it kind of made sense. But he did notice how the metal edges pressed into his hands and how the still-oily metal shavings made his feet slip, things he had not noticed on his way up.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Stranger J asked just as they reached the bottom.

Eren confirmed his theory that Stranger J was really an idiot. Did he not realize that, standing on the ground, he was doing something completely different than what he was doing at the edge of a beam in an abandoned construction site, two hundred feet up? Apparently so, since he was an idiot.

“I am standing on the ground,” said Eren, thoroughly enjoying this.

Not so much, however, when he was lifted two inches off the ground by a certain someone, supported only by the front of his shirt.

“You think this is a fucking joke, kid?”

Stranger J dropped him, and he coughed and sputtered and wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have hesitated up there.

He could have said a million upon a million things to the strange stranger.

“I’m...not… a kid,” he said.

Stranger J stared at him, propped up on his elbows, for an insurmountable amount of time.

“Fuck, it’s cold. I’m going to get a coffee.”

The strange thing about the strange stranger is that he did not move a single inch in the direction of a coffee shop. He stood there, foggy breath puffing out and petering out. After a minute, or two, perhaps, he spoke again.

“Are you just going to lie there all night?”

Eren realized how silly he had been, expecting Stranger J to just leave him there without an answer.

“Uh, I'll go.”

 

* * *

 

Eren was very, very finicky when it came to defining what a proper coffee shop was. It didn’t have a striped overhang in front? It was a shop that sold coffee, nothing more. It didn’t have heated floor tiles? Tsk.

The place they (as in him and Stranger J) had arrived at was not a coffee shop. It was not a shop that sold coffee. It was like a bargain auto shop. It sold tar. (Do auto shops sell tar? I will never know.)

It was pitiful. He made a point of telling Stranger J that he had forgotten his wallet, because what idiot brought their wallet with them when they went out with intentions of never coming back? (To say the truth, Eren had not owned a wallet for 5 years. And even if he did, he didn't have any money to put in it. This, of course, was something he would not tell Stranger J.)

Also, he wouldn't pay for tar even if he did have money.

They took a seat by a grimy window, and they could see the lights from nearby shops that looked happier and probably didn't have windows as grimy as the one they were staring through at the moment.

 "Tell me what you were doing up there," said the strange stranger.

Eren could have told him.

"I was enjoying the view."

Eren could have told him.

Stranger J sighed. He sighed. He sighed with contempt.

"You were enjoying the view so much, you were crying, huh?"

Eren could have told him.

"Why are you asking me this? It's my turn," he said, pretending not to be offended by the smell of instant coffee wafting up from his cup.

"What is there to ask about me?" Stranger J asked.

"What's your name?"

Stranger J laughed. His laugh was unpleasant. His laugh sounded like the sound of a car hitting the railing on the side of a highway.

"Ah, yes. I haven't properly introduced myself. I'm Jean Kirschstein. Full-time senior at the local high school," he said. "Now, can you answer this question? Why did you go there, of all places?”

Eren did tell him this time.

“It was abandoned, so I thought that I would have a higher chance of successfully killing myself without someone there to stop me.”

The sound of a car hitting the railing on the side of a highway.

“Well, isn’t everything around here abandoned?”

This is what he had said, as Eren looked out the window and watched the bar next door, which was not abandoned. Neither was the barber shop next to that.

A silence ensued. Eren stirred another packet of sugar into the tar in a cup in front of him.

“Well, John, it was-”

“J-E-A-N,” said Jean Kirschstein, almost immediately. “It’s French.”

“French?” Eren blinked, twice. “Like, baguette?”

“No, idiot,” grumbled Jean Kirschstein. “Like, um…”

"French fries," said Eren.

Jean Kirschstein's expression said  _I give up._

"I give up," said Jean Kirschstein.

Jean Kirschstein then looked at his watch. Jean Kirschstein pushed his chair back and stood up.

"Here, I'll give you my number. In case you decide to tell me," Jean Kirschstein said.

Eren refused it but he didn't refuse it a moment later.

"It won't matter. I'll be gone by the end of the week," said Eren.

Car hitting the railing on the side of a highway.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> This chapter was pretty short, hehe.  
> Also, I'm trying a new writing style so sorry if some parts didn't make sense.


End file.
